Ellerman House

One wall of the Wine Gallery at Ellerman House is made of soil, collected from Cape wine farms, so the ground comes before the glass. The centrepiece is a corkscrew spiralling up through thousands of bottles, in what the house counts among South Africa's most significant private wine collections. The building went up in 1906 as a grand seaside home, on the slopes of Lion's Head above Bantry Bay, and it has kept the manner: cream walls, arched colonnades, white balustrades and balconies facing the Atlantic. Below them the lawn steps down in terraces to a heated lap pool, with striped loungers under orange parasols. The art is the house's other collection, more than two centuries of South African work hung all through the house, so a good deal of it is on the way to breakfast.

Recommended for couples and friends who travel for wine and art, and for families who can take a whole villa. The house takes guests from twelve, and families with younger children are pointed to the villas: Villa One, with three or five bedrooms and an infinity pool, or Villa Two, with three bedrooms and a private cinema. The guest pantry never closes. Clifton's beaches are within walking distance, and for a bigger day the house arranges the winelands, or a helicopter over Table Mountain. The restaurants are Curate, among the wine, and OneEighty, which admits the view is the first thing guests notice and says it is rarely what they remember most. Bar Roc claims that guests come in for one drink and leave hours later, and with thousands of bottles in the house, it would be hard to argue.